JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 123 
that the interior of her crescent is less dark than the background of 
the sky, called the ashy light, though Venus has no satellite to pro- 
duce it. It is supposed to arise from clouds on the planet, which 
hide its disc and perhaps the stellar light scattered through space. 
The eye instinctively continues the crescent shape, and imagines 
rather than sees its completion. The revolution of Venus is per- 
formed in an orbit almost exactly circular, in a period of 224 days, 
16 hours, eight seconds. 
As to the days of Venus, a great divergency of opinion exists. 
Camille Flammarion and Elard Gore, Cassini, Bianchini, Schroter 
and a host of others maintain that it turns on its axis in 23 days, 
some minutes, and it was supposed to be definitely determined in 
1841, at Rome, by Devico, and fixed at 23 hours, 21 minutes, 22 
seconds, but Schiaparelli, of Milan, turned his attention to this planet 
in 1877 and noticed a dark shade and two dark spots, all situated 
not far from the southern end of the crescent. He watched for 3 
months and found there was no change perceptible in the position 
they occupy. This showed that Venus could not rotate in 23 hours, 
nor in any other short period. Week after week the spots remained 
unaltered until Schiaparelli felt convinced that his observation could © 
only be reconciled with a revolution between 6 and 9 months. He 
naturally concluded that the period was 225 days, that is to say, 
the time which Venus takes to complete one revolution of the Sun. 
In other words, Venus always presents one face to the Sun. This 
has been confirmed by Mr. Lowell, who has published a number of 
drawings of Venus made by his twenty-four inch refractor. He 
finds that the rotation is performed in the same time as the orbital 
revolution, the axis of rotation being perpendicular to the plane of 
its orbit. 
Man is a social being, and the question is Venus inhabited and 
if so what are its people? has engaged the minds of many able 
writers. The discussion of this subject alone would require more 
time than is at our disposal. It is admitted by all that Venus has 
an atmosphere twice as dense as ours, that her light and heat is 
twice as great as we receive from the Sun, and while some maintain 
that owing to her axial revolution the conditions are inimical to life, 
others are equally certain that under those conditions Venus would 
constitute an ideal abode. 
